Anthony Trevelyan’s debut novel The Weightless World is an
inventive satire on our relationship with technology and Western views of
India. The novel is built around an unlikely friendship between Raymond Ess, a
business executive recovering from a nervous breakdown, and his cynical
personal assistant Steven Strauss, as the pair attempt to purchase an
anti-gravity machine which Ess believes will save their company. Comic and
thought-provoking, The Weightless World is well worth seeking out. Here, I talk
to the author about becoming a debut novelist, working with Galley Beggar and
his experiences of India.
Read my review here.
What's your one-line pitch for
The Weightless World, for someone who hasn't heard about it before?
‘In a desperate bid to save their failing company, two (broadly)
lovable English pillocks travel to India and attempt to buy an antigravity
machine.’
Tell us about writing The
Weightless World: when did you begin, and how did it change over time?
I started writing the book in early 2013 and finished a first
draft within the year. After that I had
blindingly useful notes from my wife Gemma, my agent Emma Herdman at Curtis
Brown, and my publishers Sam Jordison and Eloise Millar of Galley Beggar Press,
each of whom did sterling work in knocking the thing into shape. I’m a big believer in the second – and third,
and fourth – pair of eyes: some of the stuff I’d missed or got wrong the first
time through was absolutely mind-bending.
What was the significance
of setting the novel in India? And have you travelled there, to get a sense of
locations?
I’ve been lucky enough to travel to India four times as part of a
project run by the college I work for, and I found it to be just the most
extraordinary country. I’m aware that
my knowledge of India is of course staggeringly partial and superficial, but my
impressions of the places I visited remain so vital within me I felt for a long
time that I would have to do something with them. In that sense I think the book is probably more
to do with perceptions of India than India itself: I’m pretty confident about
exploring the mad ideas that some outsiders can have about India, but the real
India – the real place where real people live – I don’t feel qualified to
describe.
One strand of The
Weightless World explores our relationship with technology; whereas twenty
years ago, if a gadget broke, there was a fair chance you'd be able to fix it,
now we tend to have no idea how most technology works. Is there a danger in not
being aware of how things work, or what they can do?
I think there’s something in that.
The sheer ubiquity of these devices, astonishingly powerful
supercomputers in every handbag and back pocket, means that for many of us they
have become almost indistinguishable from natural resources. They work on us elementally, like air or
sunlight. And one thing about the
elements is that they are simultaneously poetic and utterly banal – ever-ripe
for lyrical rediscovery, and yet always already yesterday’s news. It seems to me that our view of technology
has gained a similar paradoxical quality, and in the book I was keen to look at
that.
Also the question is knowledge is
interesting. The idea that we are happy
not to understand the technologies that surround us became for me a kind of
metaphor for delegated thinking as a whole – the way we are encouraged to
believe that knowledge and understanding and thought are objects being professionally
curated elsewhere, under the stewardship of state-approved ‘experts’, while the
rest of us are left to get on with the obedient business of merely enjoying
ourselves.
What has your experience
of being a debut novelist been like so far? Any highlights?
Being of a gloomy and uncharitable turn of mind, I was wholly unprepared
for how nice everyone has been about it.
My wife, my family and friends, my wife’s family and friends – everyone
has been so positive and supportive I’ve felt completely at sea.
Also, I’ve been frankly astonished
by the way my agent and publishers have got behind the book. I think I’d expected that if I ever got to
the point of having a novel that was actually coming out I would be smoothly absorbed
into some Borg-like publishing machine, all anonymous cogs and levers, and it
hasn’t been like that. Emma, Sam and
Elly have really put themselves out for The
Weightless World, their actual, personal selves, and I find that amazing
and humbling and, honestly, quite weird.
Elvis or Beatles?
Beatles.
Which current authors do you
most enjoy reading?
Toni Morrison. Every book
of hers is an education in what the novel can do. I read her latest, God Help the Child, in a terrible fever of awe and excitement, not
just because it was such a departure for Morrison but because it kept reminding
me of all the unsuspected wonders that form and language can achieve.
Recently I’ve also enormously
enjoyed books by Salena Godden (her memoir Springfield
Road is a thing of rare and soaring beauty) and Ruth Hunt (her debut novel,
The Single Feather, is probably the warmest,
most humane cat-and-mouse thriller you will ever read).
What's your favourite
place to go to write, and why?
I’m a creature of monotonous habit and tend to write in the same
place – that is, unergonomically hunched at my desk over my laptop. Still, I had a wonderful writing experience a
few years ago, when my entering the last phases of a novel coincided with a
holiday to Greece. For a few hours each
day Gemma (at the time she was still my girlfriend) went down to the hotel pool
to loll and brown and browse at a book while I sat with my laptop in the
balcony of our room, luxuriously smoking (at the time I was still a smoker) and
writing. It all felt very bracingly
Hemingwayesque, and therefore completely un-me.
What are you working on next?
I’ve got an idea coalescing,
though I have to say it’s still in a fairly immature state. My hope is that once The Weightless World is safely launched and I can smooth all the
tension-lines out of my neck I’ll be able to settle down to have a good look at
my notes and see if I can do anything with them.
Thanks for having me!
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